This book is, I'd say, very characteristic Muriel Spark, but it would certainly not be the one I'd recommend to any newcomer wanting to make her acquaintance for the first time. Some comment that I have seen seems to suggest that the book is not viewed as one of her best either. Myself, I'm not so sure about that. This story is, to put it mildly, a bit fey, and to put it more emphatically downright weird. A tinge of irrationality is nothing new in a Muriel Spark novel, but this typically short production inhabits the outer limits. The characters are no more than animations, the situations are bizarre and fantastic, and not only is the reality of both called frequently into question, there is even a strong hint that the main dramatis personae had actually died in an air raid during the second world war.
Some of the usual Spark features are missing this time, for instance there is no Catholicism and there are no Scottish names. By way of a change, the setting is New York, and if you are already familiar with Spark's cast of mind you will not be surprised to learn that this great city comes in for some memorable satire for its psychoanalysts and its half-page list of 'problems' - 'the youth problem, the racist problem...the homosexual problem, the traffic problem, the heterosexual problem, the obesity problem, the garbage problem...the uxoricidal problem...the drug problem...' The phantoms or semi-phantoms who populate the book are to some extent a device for conveying a critical view of New York, but of course one can never pin down Muriel Spark as simply as that. These strange personae have a cartoon-life of their own, and one sequence at least - the choice of over-ripe tomatoes for their alleged dietary properties and the use they are subsequently put to - is very typical Spark humour, and I found it very funny.
The chief character in the book casts a shadow that falls in the wrong direction. Right at the end, in response to an undefined but seemingly ghostly summons, she leaves the scene trailing not Wordsworthian clouds of glory but 'her faithful and lithe cloud of unknowing'. Dame Muriel Spark herself left our society only a few days ago, leaving behind her a unique collection of novels where bafflement is all part of the intended effect. It is her own cloud of unknowing, but at its best it is a cloud of glory too.
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